Scott Kildall
Artists Statement:
I work at the intersection of media culture and human memory.
My artwork depicts collapse: between producer and consumer, viewer and viewed and simulated and real.
I appropriate material, bend rules of consent, restage events and invite viewers to alter my exhibited pieces. These acts and products reflect a shift in cultural production — where ownership dips into a zone of ambiguity and image and sound is widely recycled. I use video, installation, prints, sculpture and performance to express desires for connection through a changing media landscape. In a recent project, I approached people at public events and asked them for a photograph. Instead, I took video.
From these hundreds of clips, I compiled a 40-minute edit of strangers waiting in anticipation and smiling towards the unknown.
Lately, I have been using Second Life — an online world with simulated physical space — as a site for artistic inquiry. Here, I remediate iconic performances and realize “imaginary objects” as paper sculptures. Traditional and new media collide then recombine into a hybrid form. The notion of the original form sinks in wake of these acts. My work reveals how humans express emotions in this new topography.
Scott Kildall is a cross-disciplinary artist working with video, installation, prints, sculpture and performance. He gathers material from the public realm as the crux of his artwork in the form of interventions into various concepts of space.
He has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Philosophy from Brown University and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago through the Art & Technology Studies Department. He has exhibited his work internationally in galleries and museums. He has received fellowships and awards from organizations including the Kala Art Institute, The Banff Centre for the Arts, and Turbulence.org.